Heart of Racing frustrated again at IMSAs visit to Mid-Ohio

The body language of Maxime Martin exiting the cockpit of the #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Racing Vantage GTD at the end of yesterdays latest round of the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship confirms our own fear of a continuing frustration within the team.

With the sister #23 GTD Pro car of Ross Gunn and Alex Riberas having finally claimed a class win at the Long Beach round of the Championship back in April, we had hoped that the team had finally turned a corner in terms of car performance that would allow the #27 crew to race for a good finish at yesterday’s 160-minute Sprint Cup race from Mid-Ohio.

With Roman de Angelis again having qualified the car onto the second row of the thirteen strong GTD grid on Saturday, it was the Canadian who started yesterday’s race only to lose two quick places at the start thanks to one, from a jump-starting Lexus!

Mixed amongst a combined grid of DPi, LMP2, LMP3 and GTD cars around the beautiful 2.4-mile circuit near Lexington, the race ran surprisingly ‘green’ until the forty-five-minute mark when De Angelis had run his minimum drive time for Martin to then take over.

Just after the hour mark and with all the GTD runners having made their first stop, the #27 car was still stuck behind faster cars being driven by ‘slower’ drivers as the AMR factory driver could simply not get past silver ranked Michael Dinan aboard his new version BMW M4 GTD amongst others leading the GTD train.

At the halfway stage, Dinan finally pitted for Martin to assume the race lead as two quick fire FCY’s interrupted the flow of the race to recover stranded cars for around the circuit which at least allowed the #27 to pit for service under caution.

Back to green within seventy minutes remaining, that was always going to be too far for the V8 Vantage to travel on one tank and, by the time the remaining GTD cars had pitted for the final time, Martin would have no choice but to sacrifice their then P4 position for just two seconds of fuel in order to finish the race.

Finish the race they did but unfortunately way down in P8 in class despite their best of efforts again as the Championship moves onto Detroit in early June where we hope their previous fortune and street circuit characteristic will again help the team.

Photo credits - Jamie Price Photography